What is the difference between a coffer and a trunk?

In these listings a coffer is a chest of furniture: oak, boarded or panelled, made to stand in a house and hold linen or valuables. Coffer appears in 357 titles. Trunk is used more loosely, and covers the travelling side as well - bound, covered and domed boxes made for coach, ship and campaign use. Plenty of dealers use trunk for both.

Why is camphor wood so common on campaign trunks?

Camphor is the most distinctive timber in the category, named in 310 titles across three spellings. It sits almost always on campaign or military trunks rather than on domestic chests. Those trunks are commonly brass bound, and brass-bound camphor sits well above plain examples in the range. Camphor and campaign appear together in the same title dozens of times.

How old are most of these?

The dealer-entered dates run from 1670 to 1950, but only 698 of 2,003 listings carry a clean year. The largest labels are 19th Century and Victorian, both broad. 18th and 17th Century labels follow, and a small handful of pieces are called 16th Century. Tighter decade labels such as 1920s, 1900s and 1880s are thinner on the ground.

Are painted chests part of this category?

Yes. Painted appears in 115 titles, mostly on pine and elm blanket boxes, with dated painted Scandinavian chests among them. The dated painted examples cluster high in the sampled range. Pairs of Swedish-painted boxes have come through as well.

Do Asian and colonial chests turn up?

They do, steadily but in small numbers. Chinese appears in 84 titles, Indian in 60 and teak in 85. The samples also carry Zanzibar chests, Anglo-Indian and Anglo-Chinese trunks, Hoshiarpur and Bareilly work, Syrian mother-of-pearl inlay and a Portuguese colonial chest.

What are the more unusual forms?

Coverings account for several of them: a deer-skin coaching trunk, a pony-skin chest, a pigskin carriage trunk, a round hide coffer and a kilim-covered pine trunk. Metal and vellum show up too, including an aluminium steamer trunk, a set of three tin trunks and a vellum portmanteau. Scale varies as widely, from a doll's banded trunk to a teak and iron dowry chest called monumentally large.

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Antique Trunks

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A lidded box for storing or moving things: linen and clothes chests for the house, and bound or covered trunks made to travel by coach, ship or campaign.